


Return, Return

by Zabbers



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst?, Episode AU: s03e13 Last of the Time Lords, Other, and everything that comes after, flashfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 12:03:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16218647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zabbers/pseuds/Zabbers
Summary: Aboard the Valiant, the Doctor takes the biggest risk of all to save everyone. Everyone.





	Return, Return

**Author's Note:**

  * For [extryn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extryn/gifts).



It’s easier than he might have thought: conspire with the Joneses, and with Jack, to create a diversion and steal the Master’s screwdriver. Fail, when the opportunity comes, to defeat the Master, whose careful paranoia has locked down the tools of assassination to his own hand, and to the knives of his laughing toys. Anger him. Anger him and draw his anger and direct it--carefully, carefully, the trickiest bit--away from the humans. Jack _would_ sacrifice himself, the Doctor’s taught him that, but Jack isn’t the only one with a body on offer.

Jack isn’t the only one who can be cut down and come back, the only one who could survive the slaughter. 

How many times has he beaten the Master when he only meant to help him? How many times has he shut the door on his friend, smug, superior, his hands in his pockets, secure in the thought that no matter how badly he has alienated himself from his people and from the universe, he’s somehow come out better than the companion who once outpaced him at everything they were told should matter? The one who promised he never would?

How many hours has he spent in his little tent imagining what it will be like to hold the Master, to rehabilitate him, to forgive him, magnanimous and caring, when the time comes?

Across the surface of the planet below, the people of the Earth suffer while he cultivates this future, and somewhere among that populace, a young woman is spreading the good word, step by impossible step. It’s no longer acceptable to the Doctor to make them all wait so long. He’s tired of watching other people die, even if he’s planning on fixing it, even if in a moment they'll sit up, gasping, again.

The Doctor watches for his chance. That strangely childish temper flushes across the Master’s face, gripping him. He grimaces. He aims the confiscated screwdriver, and innocuous as it could be, just metal and circuits, at the end of his arm it is a brutal and vicious device. 

The Doctor chuckles, derisive. Goading.

The Master’s anger becomes a snarl. “What?”

“They’re only humans. All this power, all this terror, and you still can’t control them.”

The muscles tighten in the Master’s jaw. The pleasure behind his killing posture condenses into a played out, more painful thing. 

A shiver, something anticipatory, runs along the Doctor’s spine. A little thrill. _Knock me down,_ he thinks, _as though we’re still children._ Go on. 

The beam from the screwdriver hits him before his eyes can transmit its message to his brain. (The Master’s thumb on the trigger. The impulse or the decision on his face.) The light envelops him, blinds him, slices through to the centre of him. To his hearts. This is how the Master touches his hearts.

Then he’s on his knees. Then the radiation wracks him, and he feels his cells change in massive response. It hurts, it always hurts. He wonders if this is how werewolves feel, the stranger ripping its way out of you as though you’re nothing more than the fuel that feeds the other you don’t want to become. But he’s so strong, the emergent Doctor, and he’s still on his knees, and he doesn’t want to go, and the Master is watching, and then he’s here. 

 

Shock. All the humans, uncomprehending, stupefied, except for Jack, who knows him better than any human should, or can, which is why he isn’t human anymore. 

They’re still in danger, all of them. The room rings with the silence that comes after a gun is fired. The Doctor fizzes with life, not really in tune with himself, not yet. He feels as though he’s choking and as though he’s high on oxygen, and fluid, and new, and old, and ravenous.

Jack rushes towards him, trying to help him. So much faith. This new Doctor could be anybody! 

The Master raises his weapon, almost reflexively, but he pauses, his eyes on the Doctor. The guards, belatedly, prime their machine guns, catching Jack in their sights. The Master nods, such an offhand, nonchalant gesture. This is quotidian. This is banal. 

Oh, Jack. They gun him down.

Rage. Rage, this body has so much of it, and it hates to feel helpless.

 _Enough._

Jack slumps, close enough to collapse against him, but the Doctor needs to be angry now, not tender, and he lets him fall, the blood smearing on the new skin, the new hands already stained with it.

He turns back to the Master. He shoves down the sick feeling and replaces it with disdain so that he can finish what he’s started. “You never could,” he says, letting his voice (so young!) go arrogant, as though nothing has interrupted their conversation.

But of course it isn’t about controlling the humans. It never has been. It’s about controlling him. About controlling what they are, what they’ve become. And he has a bet to make about that. One bullet in the gun. Spin the barrel. Point it. Fire. 

He makes it off his knees, one foot at a time. He won’t wait any more. He’ll have that reformation now. What’s a laser screwdriver, what’s an entire Toclafane army, against so much possibility? It’s vengeance. It’s penance. It’s love. He reaches.

There’s something like panic, something like relief, before the Master shoots him again. Again. The blinding brightness. 

 

Someone’s arms around his shoulders. Someone shouting at him, slapping his cheek-- “ _Regenerate!_ ”

It isn’t a refusal. See? The Doctor wrests the Master’s hand out of the air, to touch his skin, so he can feel it. The end of the line. 

See? Do you understand? I'm done. 

The revelation is like a vacuum that empties them. See? It isn’t my choice. Not anymore. 

While the Master was busy running away, the Doctor was busy dying. Remember when it used to be the other way around? What have we done to ourselves, old friend?

Naïve, to think that regeneration was anything like this. Only emptiness coming through. Is this why humans are the way they are? And the Master, why he is? But...there’s still the bet. He’s still the Doctor. And there’s still hope. Hope was the whole point of this exercise. 

The Master doesn’t weep. He doesn’t rail, he doesn’t rend his garments, he doesn’t double his body over the Doctor’s, helpless in the face of his abandonment. He’ll do anything for survival. Hope is the point of this whole exercise.

The pain is overwhelming when there’s no cellular renaissance to distract him from the damage. But the Doctor can feel this: the Master’s hand around his, palm to palm and fingers curled. The Master’s lips, chaste and formal, against his mouth. The light, cutting through him, touching his hearts. The Master’s life, hard-earned, hoarded, given freely to save him, now, now the choice is his, as he might once have promised that he would. 

 

Then they’re new together, like the first time, reinvented, and the Master smiles, and it’s a new face, but the same smile. The tie, now ill-fitting, is loosened, released, dropped into the Doctor’s lap. The Master sits back. The _Valiant_ might as well have disappeared. It was never about the humans. 

A shake of the head, too much fondness.

“You win,” says one of them--or the other.


End file.
